In this lesson you will
- Explain the rename from SysOps Administrator to CloudOps Engineer and the move from SOA-C02 to SOA-C03
- Name the five exam domains and their weights, and say which course modules serve each one
- Describe how the exam is scored, including the 720 passing score, the scored and unscored questions, and compensatory scoring
- Check the current exam time, fee and policies on the AWS certification page rather than relying on this course
Certification exams are written to a published guide, and that guide changes over time. This course prepares you for the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate exam, exam code SOA-C03, and it follows version 1.1 of the exam guide. Before you study anything else, you need to know what the exam tests, how it is scored, and what the course will ask of you.
The course is hands-on on purpose. AWS describes the job as operating workloads “by using the AWS Management Console and the AWS CLI”, so each module teaches a console route and a command-line route side by side, and most modules end with a lab in a sandbox account of your own.
Why it matters
Operations work on AWS is where incidents are found and fixed: an alarm fires, a deployment fails, a database runs out of room, a certificate is about to expire. The exam checks whether you can monitor, deploy, secure, network and recover a workload, and whether you can do it safely. Reading about those tasks is not enough, so the labs are part of the study, not an optional extra.
The name and the version
The certification was renamed. It used to be called AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate and is now called AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate. The name change does not apply to people who already hold the SysOps certification, and they do not need to sit the new exam to keep it. The SysOps certificate stays valid for three years from the date it was earned.
The exam code also changed. SOA-C02 was the exam until 29 September 2025, and SOA-C03 has been the live exam since 30 September 2025. The current exam guide is version 1.1, published on 1 June 2026. Version 1.0 was published on 30 September 2025.
What changed recently (September 2025): SOA-C03 replaced SOA-C02. The old six domains became five, the weights moved, and the CloudWatch agent for EC2, ECS and EKS, CloudFormation and CDK stacks, and CloudWatch network monitoring were added. S3 static website hosting was removed. Source: the SOA-C02 and SOA-C03 comparison.
What changed recently (June 2026): Version 1.1 of the exam guide reworded ten skills, including skill 1.3.4, which now names Amazon S3 Files as a shared-storage option, and skill 4.2.5, which names AWS Security Agent. Source: the exam guide revisions page.
What the exam covers
The guide sets five content domains, and each has a weight of the scored content.
| Domain | Weight | Modules in this course |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Monitoring, Logging, Analysis, Remediation, and Performance Optimization | 22% | 2, 3, 4 |
| 2. Reliability and Business Continuity | 22% | 5, 6 |
| 3. Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation | 22% | 7, 8 |
| 4. Security and Compliance | 16% | 9, 10 |
| 5. Networking and Content Delivery | 18% | 11, 12 |
The weights add up to 100%. The guide breaks each domain into tasks (for example, Task 1.1) and each task into skills (for example, Skill 1.1.1). Domain 1 has the most skills (fourteen, against nine for Domain 2 and twelve for Domain 5), so it is the one most likely to need extra study time. The module list in this course shows where each task is taught.
How the exam is scored
- The exam has 65 questions. 50 affect your score and 15 are unscored. AWS does not identify the unscored questions on the exam, so answer every question as if it counts.
- There are two question types. Multiple choice has one correct answer and three distractors. Multiple response has two or more correct answers out of five or more options. This course writes every question with one best answer, but the exam itself may ask you to choose several.
- Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect, and there is no penalty for guessing. Never leave a question blank.
- Results are pass or fail. The scaled score runs from 100 to 1,000, and the minimum passing score is 720.
- Scoring is compensatory. You do not need to pass each domain separately. A strong domain can offset a weak one, so you need a good overall result, not a perfect one in every area.
Watch out: A low score in one domain is not automatically a fail, but it still tells you where to study. Use your score report’s domain feedback to choose which modules to revisit, and use caution when you interpret that section-level feedback, as the exam guide itself advises.
Time, fee and policies
The exam is 130 minutes long, and the current registration fee is 150 USD. You can take it in English or Japanese, or in Simplified Chinese or Korean. AWS’s notice says the Simplified Chinese and Korean versions will be retired after 19 November 2026. The notice covers only those two versions.
The certification is valid for three years. To renew it you can pass the latest version of this exam, or earn the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional certification.
Booking, rescheduling, identification, retakes and conduct rules change, so this lesson does not repeat them. Read them on the AWS certification page for the CloudOps Engineer – Associate exam before you book.
Who the exam is for
AWS describes the target candidate as someone with about one year of experience deploying, managing, troubleshooting, networking and securing workloads on AWS, and at least one year in a related operations role such as a system administrator. The guide’s general IT knowledge list includes familiarity with at least one major operating system and at least one scripting language, plus containerization and orchestration basics, and an understanding of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and Git. That is why Module 8 includes a lesson on Linux operations.
The guide lists job tasks the candidate is not expected to perform. They include designing distributed architectures, designing CI/CD pipelines, designing hybrid and multi-VPC networking, developing software, defining security and governance requirements, and analysing costs and total cost of ownership. When a study topic sounds like one of these, the exam is more likely to ask how to operate or troubleshoot it than how to design it.
How the course is organised
The course has 13 modules. Modules 2 to 12 each teach one or two domains and end with a lab and a checkpoint. Module 1, this one, sets up the sandbox account. Module 13 is the capstone and the practice exam.
| Module | Topic | Tasks and skills |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Getting started | All |
| 2 | Monitoring and logging | 1.1 |
| 3 | Incident response and automation | 1.2, 3.2.2 |
| 4 | Performance optimization | 1.3 |
| 5 | Scalability and elasticity | 2.1 |
| 6 | Availability, backup and recovery | 2.2, 2.3 |
| 7 | Provisioning and infrastructure as code | 3.1 |
| 8 | Systems Manager and operations | 3.2.1 |
| 9 | Identity, access and compliance | 4.1 |
| 10 | Protecting data and infrastructure | 4.2 |
| 11 | VPC and private connectivity | 5.1 |
| 12 | DNS, delivery and troubleshooting | 5.2, 5.3 |
| 13 | Capstone and exam | All |
Each lesson and lab names the tasks and skills it serves. Learners need 70% on a lesson’s questions to unlock the next lesson.
How to study
Work through the course in order, because later modules use the sandbox account and the habits you build in earlier labs. For each lesson:
- Read the lesson and study its architecture diagram.
- Do the Try it section, which is free and needs no changes to your account.
- Answer the lesson’s questions, and read the explanation for each question you get wrong.
- Do the module’s lab in your sandbox, and run its clean-up step before you stop.
Keep a note of each CLI command you used and what it printed. In the exam, a question that names a command or a console screen is easier to answer when you have used it yourself.
Where the labs run
Every lab runs in one AWS account that you own and use only for this course, never a work or production account. Lab 1 sets it up: it protects the root user with multi-factor authentication (MFA), signs you in through AWS IAM Identity Center so that you work with a temporary role session instead of the root user or stored access keys, and creates a budget alert. Each later lab creates resources in that account and ends with a clean-up step. The diagram shows the arrangement.
Try it
No account is needed for this exercise. Open the exam guide in a browser and find the five domain weights. Then add them up in a terminal:
echo $((22 + 22 + 22 + 16 + 18))The command should print 100. Next, check the question counts. You should see 65:
echo $((50 + 15))Both results should match what this lesson says. If a number differs, trust the exam guide.
Exam tips
- “Operate”, “monitor”, “troubleshoot” and “remediate” point to in-scope tasks. “Design a distributed architecture” or “design a CI/CD pipeline” point to tasks the guide excludes.
- “SysOps Administrator” in a question refers to the older name of this certification. The current exam is SOA-C03.
- “Select all that apply”, or a question that asks for two or more answers, means a multiple-response question. Read the number of answers requested before you choose.
- “No penalty for guessing” means every blank answer is a missed point. Always answer, and mark the question to return to if you have time.
- “Console or CLI” in a scenario tells you the exam expects you to know both routes, so choose the answer that works in the environment the question describes.
- “Compensatory” means a single weak domain does not fail the exam by itself.
Further reading
- AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate: time, fee, languages and policies.
- Exam guide for SOA-C03: domains, weights and task statements.
- Exam guide revisions: what changed between versions 1.0 and 1.1.
Key takeaways
- The certification is now AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate, exam code SOA-C03, and the current exam guide is version 1.1.
- The exam has 65 questions, 50 scored and 15 unscored, and a scaled score of 720 out of 1,000 passes.
- Scoring is compensatory: you pass the exam as a whole, not each domain, so do not neglect the weaker domains.
- The exam tests operating, monitoring, troubleshooting and securing workloads with the console and the CLI, not designing new architectures.
- Study in the course's order, do each lab in a sandbox account, and check your answers against the lesson that teaches them.
Lesson questions
Answer all 10, then check them. You need 7 right to pass this lesson and unlock the next one. Try as often as you like; after three tries the answers and explanations are shown. These are our own questions, written for this course.
You book and take the exam yourself with AWS. We do not run exams or sell exam vouchers. Pontelon is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or an authorized training partner of AWS. Practice questions are our own, written against the published exam guide, never leaked exam content. Certification names are trademarks of their owners.